miles to go
by foreverwriting9
Summary: "Clara, why would you want to go for a boring old run when we could just pop over to Galafaxorous, accidentally insult the king's malodorous son, and then be chased by his brain-sucking guards?" Sometimes Clara has nightmares, but she learns how to cope.


**A/N: I've wanted to explore this idea for the longest time, but darn it all, this story was a struggle.**

* * *

Her nightmares pick up again after Skaro.

Traveling with the Doctor, she's always had bad dreams. She's used to them. They seem pretty much like a foregone conclusion when you've lived like they've lived, seen what they've seen. But these are different somehow.

The claustrophobic press of a Dalek casing around her, fear crawling up the back of her throat. The Doctor, the man who saves people, pointing a gun at her and nothing she says coming out right. All of his rage and his hatred focused solely on her; he is the Oncoming Storm, and suddenly she understands that he could so easily sweep her away.

Pain. Ripping through every muscle and nerve. Everything on Skaro burning and her along with it. Sometimes she kills him, just to make the fear and pain go away. Sometimes she stays inside the Dalek and goes on killing and killing and killing until there is nothing left but her, the perfect hybrid of human perseverance and Dalek ruthlessness.

At weirder moments sometimes there's a Cyberman standing in front of her and it's Danny but it's also not Danny. His mouth is crooked, a terrifying leer, and he hisses, " _I wasn't very good at it, but I did love you_."

And then he shoots her.

* * *

"Clara?"

She jerks awake so suddenly that she knocks her elbow painfully against the wooden arm of the chair she's fallen asleep in. "What was that?"

The Doctor's standing off to her right in front of a chalkboard, a piece of chalk clutched between his fingers, and he's frowning at her. Just over his shoulder she can make out several detailed charts, the furious scrawl of his handwriting. "Please tell me you didn't doze off in the middle of my very informative lecture on the customs of the Reichbard Werewolves."

"I didn't doze off in the middle of your very informative lecture on the customs of the Reichbard Werewolves."

"I don't believe you."

"Well I didn't, so." At the Doctor's scowl, Clara straightens herself in the chair, waving a hand at the chalkboard. "Really, I've got the gist of it. Angry werewolves. Strangely German. I should try my very hardest to smell like flowers or something rather than human meat."

He looks a little put out at her casual summary of everything he's worked so diligently to lay out for her using graphics and well-constructed rules. "Clara, the _gist_ of this information isn't enough. You need to internalize it, know it like the back of your - "

"Doctor!"

He stops, mouth open, eyebrows drawn together. She's always thought he looks kind of like an owl, but never, until this moment, has the likeness been so obvious.

A deep breath. A smile to let him know that she's okay, that everything is under control. It's just that she hasn't really been sleeping lately and when she finally does she usually has dreams that kind of make her want to die. "Doctor, I've got it; it's fine."

* * *

It's not fine.

In fact, it turns out she might have slept through his entire lecture on what she should and shouldn't do when in the presence of these particular werewolves.

"I told you so!" he whispers sharply, somehow managing to sound smug even while he's trying to catch his breath.

Clara just misses stepping on his toes with the heel of her shoe. " _Shut. Up."_

There's a scratching sound as something sharp brushes along the door of the storage cupboard they're currently hiding in. Clara finds herself reaching for the Doctor's hand even though she's well and truly annoyed with him.

His fingers find hers first as it is, and he tugs her gently backward, away from the door and deeper into the close darkness of the space.

The scratching stops.

"I knew you didn't listen to my lecture."

"Now. You want to do this _now_."

"Well, if we're going to be eaten by werewolves because of your lapse in judgment now seems like an appropriate time."

She pinches him fiercely and then drops his hand. In the thin stream of light coming from around the door she can just make out something that looks like a large vent. A way out. "Fine," she admits, moving from his side and groping along the wall, "I didn't listen to your bloody lecture on the werewolves."

He sighs, disappointment evident even in the way that he breathes. "Clara, that was important information that I was giving you. It wasn't just knowledge for knowledge's sake - it was vital for our adventure."

"You don't think I know that?"

"Then why - " He swallows the rest of his sentence in a high pitched and frankly embarrassing sound because suddenly she is in front of him and her hands are inside his coat. "Clara?"

Both of her palms slide lightly over his ribs and then she is gone, his sonic sunglasses pinched between her fingers. "While you were yammering on," she explains in a whisper, "I found us a way out of here."

Just as she slips the frames on and turns back to the vent, a low, mournful wail rises from somewhere nearby. The scratching at the door starts again with renewed vigor.

They both freeze.

"Shit. _Shit_."

"Clara?"

She doesn't answer him. Instead what he gets in response is some more half-muffled swearing and the high-pitched whirring of his sunglasses.

"Clara, I think they've found us."

The scratching at the door suddenly seems to have multiplied by ten.

Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to travel the universe by herself. Mercifully quieter, probably. No bloody giant stick insect to point out incredibly obvious things to her. In a word, right now: heaven. "It's your stupid sunglasses," she supplies, huffing as the item in question continues to make its irritating noise. "Honestly, would a _silent_ sonic device kill you?"

"Excuse me, my _stupid_ sunglasses are what're going to get us out of this mess and - "

Even in the dark she manages to snag his hand while he's mid-gesture, yanking him forward and then dragging him after her into the now-open vent.

"Oh," he says dumbly.

They don't talk much after that - at least not until they're almost to the end of the vent, when the Doctor realizes that they're going to have to communicate in order to actually get out of the city without being eaten or viciously attacked by an angry mob of lycanthropes.

"Clara?"

" _What_?" she snaps.

"Are you okay?" The way he says it, so, so carefully - like the words are made of glass on his tongue - is what lets her know that he's not just asking about right now. He means the past few weeks, months. He means her uncharacteristic snappishness and the falling asleep during a Very Important Lecture.

Clara chokes down the truth because she is fine. It's fine; it's under control. She's got this. She's grateful now that the vent is almost as dark as the storage cupboard was since it means that he can't see her face and the entirely unconvincing smile of reassurance she tries to pull off.

"'Course I'm okay," she says, and it almost sounds true.

* * *

Sand pirates. A planet that is all desert and has two suns, no moons.

It feels like they've been walking for days.

"So where exactly did you park the TARDIS?" There's sweat pooling at the small of her back and it's a wildly unpleasant sensation. She pauses for half a step, taking in the Doctor and his stark white dress shirt, seemingly unruffled by the heat. He's swinging his jacket around lazily with one hand.

"Over there somewhere," he says, pointing vaguely toward the horizon. "I'm sure we'll get there before the crew of the _Desert Storm_ realizes that we're not actually galley inspectors; they didn't seem very quick, and they had truly atrocious hygiene."

Clara barks out a laugh. "They were pirates, Doctor. Doesn't that kind of come with the territory?"

He hums noncommittally and might mutter something under his breath about _gentlemen pirates_.

"Anyway, I'm not sure that - " She stops suddenly, stares. Blinks furiously several times just to make sure that she hasn't got an excessive amount of sand in her eyes or something.

Several hundred meters away, seemingly out of nowhere, is a giant, medieval-Earth-style castle. Its turrets stretch upward into the sky so far that they nearly block out one of the planet's suns.

"Am I hallucinating?"

The Doctor just manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes. "There's no need to be so dramatic. We've been walking for two hours. You shouldn't even be dehydrated yet."

She squints at him, not entirely convinced. "So I'm not making it up then? The castle's real?"

He nods, turning away from her so that he can face the structure and stretch his arms out wide, as though meeting the great stone walls in front of them with a hug. "Built by King Vindice-Kahn IV over two hundred years ago. Inspired by architecture he had once seen on Earth. It's actually built quite well, which is surprising given that its foundation is mostly sand. The rooms inside come together to form a gigantic labyrinth from which few have ever escaped - they even say the King himself died in there and still haunts the empty corridors of his life's work."

It's a ridiculous story, told by a ridiculous man who's currently shaking a truly enormous amount of sand out of his hair, but it still sends a prickle up Clara's spine. There's something foreboding about all of this that she can't quite put her finger on. Maybe the feeling is just a product of dehydration, despite what the Doctor's said. She asks faintly, "Why did he build it?"

"Nightmares."

She stops breathing. "What?"

He glances at her, confused by the sudden change in her tone. "Nightmares," he repeats slowly. "Old King Vindice had nightmares like you wouldn't believe, apparently. And he believed them, believed in their power. So one night he had a dream about a great battle that took place out here, away from the city. He dreamed of hell raining down on his people, his family, ripping everything apart and then, once everyone was gone, that hell set itself upon him." The Doctor stops, contemplating the dark, gaping windows of the castle. "He had the dream for weeks before he came up with a solution."

Now when Clara blinks against the light of the blazing twin suns overhead, the desert around her seems momentarily bathed in red. She tries to imagine the screams of thousands of people filling the air, cut down by some unknowable force. The oppressive terror of it all. Hearing that, _feeling_ that for weeks on end. She thinks about Danny, locked away in his Cyberman suit, eyes sad and resigned, shooting her. She doesn't need to ask any more questions; she knows the answers. "He went mad."

The Doctor nods, looking for a moment like he can see everything that's playing out behind her eyes. "Yes."

Her hand is rather suddenly in his. She's not sure when or how that happened, but he's guiding her away, pulling her gently toward where the TARDIS might or might not be in the distance.

"It's time to go now, Clara," he murmurs. "It's time to leave those nightmares behind."

* * *

She takes to running.

Whenever the nightmares get to be too much, when they finally and inevitably catch up with her again in spite of her best efforts, she'll go find the Doctor - no matter where it is that he's hiding on the TARDIS - and shake her sneakers at him. After all, she figures, running away from monsters with him has always been kind of a therapeutic, why would normal, exercise-induced running be any different?

So.

Hunting down the Doctor. Sneaker shaking. In that order.

"It's time," she'll say, always going for impressive, determined. She's not sure if it actually comes across.

He's understandably confused the first time it happens ("Clara, why would you want to go for a boring old run when we could just pop over to Galafaxorous, accidentally insult the king's malodorous son, and then be chased by his brain-sucking guards?"), but eventually he comes to accept it. He learns to stop asking questions and just take her wherever it is that she wants to go that day. The familiar, tangled streets of Shoreditch, the wide open plains of some alien planet. Anywhere and everywhere. All of time and space.

She needs an escape, so she runs.

And it helps, mostly.

* * *

There's a field of sunflowers, once, and a lavender sky stretched out over her head.

Clara runs and runs, chasing the edge of the seemingly never-ending field. She runs until she collapses, swallowed up on both sides by flowers and sunlight and sweet, blissful silence. Her heart pounds away in her chest; she breathes.

For the first time in a very long time, she feels okay. So she stays there, lying on her back in the field, for a good long while, just breathing and watching the clouds drifting past.

By the time she returns to the TARDIS - who knows how many hours later - she feels lighter, the persistent ache of her nightmares suddenly gone. When she closes her eyes all she sees are flowers and stars, growing row upon row, dazzlingly bright and colorful. If she could bottle this loose-limbed, weightless feeling she would. She bounces to the console, almost wiping out along the way and just barely managing to bring herself to a stop at the last minute.

The Doctor looks up from where he's sprawled out on the floor, twisting wires into what appears to be an effigy of Buddy Holly. "Ready?" he asks.

She grins widely at him, trying to fight the urge to grab his hand and dance him around the room. "Let's go save the world."

* * *

It's Peru-but-not-Peru because it's actually on Mars. In the future.

"Space Peru," Clara says with a smirk, poking him in the ribs.

He sighs like she's hopeless but doesn't get the chance to correct her because she then rather roughly tugs him down onto a small cafe table. He's still trying to unstick his face from the glass tabletop when the waiter comes over to serve them.

"Don't mind him." Clara waves her hand in his direction like he's a distasteful piece of trash the man should try his best to ignore. She's perched easily on her own chair, legs crossed, looking like a much more capable being. "He's had a rough day."

Once the waiter leaves with their order for tea, the Doctor finally manages to detach himself from the table. One side of his face is completely red. Clara tries not to let it distract her from the words that are coming out of his mouth, but it's surprisingly difficult, and honestly he looks like _such_ a dork.

"What on earth did you do that for?" he demands.

"Sorry, what?"

" _What_ did you do _that_ for?" This time he adds quite a bit of gesturing, some of it maybe rude.

By way of answer she points to the opposite end of the street where an angry looking man in a uniform is standing, smoking a cigar. "Chief of Police."

"Oh."

"I'm assuming he hasn't changed his mind in the last three hours since we went missing and he still wants your head. On a platter. Or maybe displayed over his fireplace."

The Doctor shrugs, trying and failing to look unaffected. "He should get in line."

She huffs out a laugh. "My point," she explains, fingers steepled under her chin, "is that we should maybe think about staying here for a moment. At least until he decides to leave, that is."

Their waiter chooses that moment to arrive with a tray sporting two cups, a teapot, and a myriad of extras they might want to add into the tea. After placing everything in front of them, he bows uncertainly to Clara and then scurries away.

"I guess we could have some tea," the Doctor says, already reaching for the generously topped off sugar bowl that's sitting beside their cups. "Pass the time."

Clara smiles, nudging his knee with the tip of her shoe. "You know, I like the sound of that."

They save Space Peru only a little while later, with a spoon, a rubber band, and exactly five sugar cubes. The Chief of Police wants her head right alongside the Doctor's now, but on balance, Clara thinks they've done pretty well today.

* * *

Of course, it can't be that simple.

The nightmares change.

Sometimes there's his ghost to deal with now, the mournful, dark-eyed wraith that wanders the shadows of her dreams, always floating just out of reach. Sometimes he's trying to kill her, sometimes she escapes. Other times they just sit, the living and the dead, staring across a table at one another. She wants to yell at him, _You promised you'd come back for me. You promised. You promised you loved_ \- but she swallows the words down.

She always feels like she's drowning in these dreams.

On the occasions when not-Danny shows up now he's absurdly dressed as the Doctor over his Cyberman's body. Hoodie, Crombie coat, sometimes even a ridiculous pair of plaid trousers. He still shoots her though. And he still hisses, in the stopped heart seconds just before the blast hits her, " _I wasn't very good at it, but I did love you_."

She's given up trying to figure out what all of it means.

She takes every opportunity to run, pushing her legs and her lungs to their limits, but she can never quite get back to the weightless freedom she felt after the field of sunflowers. What she's left with is unbearable. She knows now what it feels like to close her eyes and not see the Doctor pointing a gun at her, to not hear her own panicked shouts echoing in her ears when they're busy saving a planet. She knows what that feels like, but it's suddenly impossible for her to feel that way again.

The result is claustrophobic. Being in the TARDIS makes her want to scream. Being in her own skin makes her want to scream too.

She runs more, sleeps less. Nothing helps.

When she gets back from yet another unsuccessful run one day, the Doctor is waiting outside for her, back pressed up against the TARDIS doors, legs stretched out in front of him. "Clara," he says, and then, "You're crying." It's a testament to how concerned he is and also how much he's grown that he doesn't say, _You're malfunctioning. Why're you malfunctioning?_

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He's still peering up at her from his spot on the ground, eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What happened? Did you run into some of the locals? They can be quite rude; they might have said something upsetting about your big eyes and your short legs."

Clara ignores the jab, letting her gaze drift up to the light atop the TARDIS so that she doesn't have to lie directly to his face. "Really, Doctor, I'm fine." She gestures vaguely to the air around them. "It's probably just...allergies."

He opens his mouth to argue that when has she ever shown any signs of having anything as mundane as allergies, but she cuts him off.

"Weren't you saying something about visiting Ivan the Terrible earlier? Let's do that. I'd like to do that."

If there's desperation in her voice he doesn't point it out, just nods and murmurs, "Yes, ma'am" before leading the way back into the TARDIS.

* * *

They find her in a back alleyway in 19th century France. Technically, she's in their way, sitting in front of a side door they need to get through in order to reach Napoleon's coronation before a gang of incredibly anti-social Cybermen disrupts the whole affair.

The Doctor scowls and Clara can see him preparing a scathing diatribe, so she swoops in.

"Hello there," she says softly, crouching down. "My name's Clara."

The girl's smile is slow, but bright and sweet despite the gloom and filth that surrounds her. "My name's Elodie," she offers.

"Elodie. That's a lovely name." Beside her, the Doctor twitches so violently he nearly knocks her over. She sighs. "Listen, Elodie, my friend and I are trying to get through this door to go do something very important - do you think you could let us by?"

Elodie nods, standing up and moving to sit just to the side of the door.

The Doctor finally speaks. "Thank you, small pud - " Clara flicks him in the arm. "Thank you," he amends, albeit a little gruffly. He sonics the door open and then pulls Clara along after him.

They're halfway to the next door when he skids to a stop and turns right back around.

"Elodie!" He sticks his head back out into the alleyway. "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be at home? This alley has _at least_ ten different kinds of diseases lying about, one of which is definitely some sort of Judoon Pox. Stay away from that, you'll be itchy for months."

She watches him curiously for a moment, not really sure what to make of this strange, skinny man with the fluffy hair who uses words she's never heard of faster than she can even follow. "I'm hiding," she admits eventually.

"Hiding?"

"I have really bad dreams," she says, and then she bursts into tears.

Even from behind him, Clara can tell the Doctor is coming up on the limits of his abilities. His shoulders tense as Elodie begins to sob, his foot begins to tap anxiously; he wants to _run_.

"Hey, it's okay." Clara steps around the Doctor and out into the alley, crouching down in front of Elodie for the second time. "It's okay. Listen: I know exactly how you feel."

Her crying slows, she wipes her eyes. "You do?"

Clara reaches out a hand, letting it hang between them as a sort of offering. "Sure I do. Sometimes I have really awful dreams and I can't sleep at all. Sometimes," she adds, leaning in and dropping her voice to a whisper, "I am very, very scared."

Elodie stares at her in awe. "And what do you do? How do you make them stop?"

Clara takes a breath, looking up. Her eyes snag on the Doctor's, and it comes to her in a rush, in the way he looks at her like he wants to stop anything from hurting her ever again. "You know what might help you?" She turns back to Elodie, the answer unraveling in her chest. "Find somebody - somebody who loves you very much - and tell them all about these bad dreams. Every single detail. I know that they seem scary right now, but nightmares are just stories, and sometimes, when you share scary stories with other people, they don't seem as scary anymore. Could you do that? Do you have someone who will listen to you?"

Elodie shakes her head slowly, and then looks up at Clara. Her fingers curl gently around Clara's wrist. "Can I share them with you?" she asks.

She doesn't have to look up to know that the Doctor is nodding his assent, silently admitting that this, right here, is important. Yes, they really do need to save the soon-to-be Emperor of France from being upgraded, but this little girl, with her dirty clothes and her haunting dreams - this is what they do too.

"Of course you can," Clara says, blinking back tears. "You absolutely can."

* * *

They get back to the TARDIS what feels like days later, nightmares listened to and cyber threat eliminated. The Doctor's been strangely silent for most of the walk back, and Clara chatters away to fill the silence, afraid of letting him brood on the day's events for too long.

"And did you _see_ the look on Napoleon's face?" she asks, once they're safely within the console room. "It was _priceless_. I should have taken a picture and gotten it framed." She can feel the Doctor watching her, waiting. For some reason she keeps talking.

"You have nightmares," he says finally, interrupting her in-depth explanation of the nicknames she came up with for each of the attacking Cybermen.

It feels like everything within her stops. "Yes."

He's fiddling with buttons on the console that she knows don't need to be fiddled with. She waits patiently for his next words.

"I knew - Well, I assumed. But I didn't know how - " He closes his eyes, takes a breath, as though starting over. When he opens his eyes again he sighs, "I'm sorry, Clara. I'm so sorry."

She nods, but they're still not looking at each other. The silence stretches and stretches. She can't do this if they're going to act like they hardly know each other.

"What helps you," she asks finally, "when the nightmares get to be too much?"

It takes a moment. She honestly thinks, for a split second, that he's not going to answer at all, that he's going to spin away from her and suddenly pretend they aren't having this conversation. Then his face softens, and Clara feels the room narrow in, almost like the TARDIS is holding her breath, waiting for him.

He stares at her now like she is the only thing in the room. "You; I talk to you."

* * *

A Dalek casing around her. The Doctor standing before her, defeated and broken. _Clara_ , he says, but she can't hear him. _Clara_.

She wakes up with a shout.

When she leaves her room to find him, the door to the library has been rather conspicuously moved to sit right across the hall. She wanders in, pausing for a moment behind a bookshelf when she catches sight of him curled up on one of the couches, reading.

Somewhere overhead the TARDIS burbles, as though coaxing her forward.

The Doctor looks up from his book at the noise, catching sight of Clara amongst the stacks almost immediately. "Going for a run?" he asks, when she steps forward. "I have a place picked out already. They've very good paved roads, much better than the ones in colonial Pennsylvania - "

Clara shakes her head and falls down onto the couch next to him, cutting off his babbling. "I think I'm just going to stay right here for now," she admits.

"Oh, okay."

He goes back to reading. In the stillness of the room Clara can hear his hearts beating. She breathes.

They're fine, they're okay. They're both alive. There aren't any Daleks or Cybermen in sight, and when she closes her eyes she's just going to see stars, burning away in a night sky.

She hears rather than sees the Doctor put his book down.

His hand fits perfectly around hers, and she thinks that maybe if they could just stay like this then she would never have to worry about nightmares ever again.

"Tell me about them," he says, and so she does.


End file.
